Our
lips were warm together. It was the Christmas kiss all over again,
though
inside me now as then the effect was rather more like Bonfire Night.
For a
moment it was almost chaste – then his tongue was on mine and
everything was
all heat and melting and yielding; my mouth opening to his, my breast
quivering
under the sweep of his fingers as he sought beneath the claret coloured
fabric
of my blouse for my heartbeat. A little whimper escaped my lips as he
released
me to draw breath. It was a helpless animal noise, the sort that cannot
help
but provoke the predator. He smiled.
‘I love Dan,’ I breathed. It was my mantra.
‘I know.’ His fingers deftly slipped the top button of my fitted grey waistcoat, the main barrier between him and my nipple; I wasn’t wearing a bra beneath that red blouse. ‘You love him, and you want to fuck me.’
Plot:
Non-supernatural. Jill is married to Dan, who has
been behavng a little oddly for the past few months. She suspects he is
having an affair with their friend Fiona. Jill, Dan and Miles
(Fiona's husband) are all in the same running club together. Jill
decides to take her suspicions to Miles, and he suggests they try to
catch the adulterous couple together in flagrante. Of
course things are not entirely as they appear and it doesn't go exactly
as Jill anticipates...Sexual Themes: straight, group
Notes: This
was the last of the slew of Black
Lace anthologies published in 2009, and their last before Virgin froze
the line for 2010.The theme actually caused problems among BL's usual stable of erotica writers; there was a certain amount of discontent with the choice, and a lot of people voiced opinions along the lines of "There's nothing sexy or fun about betrayal - I'm going to find it difficult/impossible to find writing inspiration." As far as I can tell, the editor (male) did not Get This at all - his response was "But it's only a fantasy!"
Yeah, well: that's exactly what I said about minotaur stories, funnily enough. Offence is offence. (Or offense, in the US.) This might actually have been an occasion when a difference between male and female sexual attitudes was significant. Anyway, I had to give this theme some thought. I was determined to avoid the "And the stranger was her husband all along" cliche. I wanted to be sex-positive and emotionally positive, and I wanted to make the characters sympathetic - even the ones up to no good. Above all I wanted to take the protagonist on a journey of discovery.
The inspiration for Miles' appearance was the actor Eric Stoltz.
A walk in the woods provided the central story motif/the shared hobby of the characters: orienteering. As I watched runners splashing past me down muddy tracks, clad in tight lycra, certain parts of the story just wrote themselves...
Orienteering, it turns out, is a distinctly European hobby (it originated in Scandinavia) so goodness knows if American readers can understand a word I've said about it.
